The Harlem News

Lower California:
Mexico's Flowering Desert

Baja (Lower) California has come into the news again with press reports from the west coast of a renewal of the often rejected proposal to buy the dry, torrid peninsula as an addition to the United States.

Some facts about this southern extension of California are set out in a bulletin from the Washington, D. C., headquarters of the National Geographic society.

"Mexico's Baja California is more than half the size of the state of California," says the bulletin; "yet in 59 per cent as much territory, the Mexican district has only one-hundredth as many inhabitants, for it is largely undeveloped.

"Lower California, as the Spanish name is translated, gives some support to a theory that the word 'California' is derived from the Latin, calida fornax, the hot furnace. Much of the district consists of cactus-covered desert and mesa, where not once in a year does the rain come to coax thorny growth into blossoms. The 760-mile peninsula reaches across the Tropic of Cancer into torrid heat, its latitude matching that of Arabia. Water holes are mapped, oases are protectively fringed with date palms, and cacti rise in impenetrable spiny clumps 50 to 60 feet high.

"Irrigation, however, has turned some of Lower California's valleys into corn land and cotton plantations. A Russian settlement near Ensenada grows wheat. Lemons, oranges, grapes, and melons, as well as olives, thrive when irrigation canals or artesian wells bring them water. A favorite Mexican delicacy is the dried fig or the dried date grown and cured beneath the Lower California sun.

Most important farming development in the peninsula is the rich Mexicali valley at the mouth of the Colorado river, where irrigation carries into Mexico the bounty conferred on the American continuation of the agricultural region, Imperial Valley. Winter vegetables from Mexico supply San Diego.

"Up the Colorado, at high tide from the Gulf of California, rushes a dangerous tidal bore. The overflow spreads into a desert sink and creates a miniature salt lake, the shallow Laguna Salada west of the Cocopas mountains--a briny stretch 35 miles long and more than half as wide. With the Colorado heading the list, Lower California has only a half-dozen streams large enough for year-round flow in its entire 2,000-mile coast line. After rains, swift floods boil down through arroyos from the peninsula's broad mountainous backbone, which is a southward continuation of the United States' coast range. The southeastern half is a cluster of barren ranges of volcanic origin. The three tall cones of the Three Virgins volcanoes, over a mile high, half-way down the peninsula on the Gulf side, were reported active less than two centuries ago. The highest spot in Lower California--Providence Peak-- in the northern San Pedro Martir mountains, is 10,126 feet high, two-thirds the height of California's giant, Mount Whitney.

"Hope of gold and pearls lured Cortez to turn his attention from Mexican Montezumas to a search for the fabulous islands of the Californias, and to sponsor expeditions up the Gulf of California which earned that body of water the title of 'Sea of Cortez.' After dispatching ship after ship, Cortez himself sailed in 1535 for the bay of La Paz, seeking the pearls which today are still fished for in the same waters. Artificial propagation of the pearl oyster beds has been necessary, however, to maintain the supply.

Turquoise, tourmaline, and onyx have been other lures to prospectors, but the main attraction is still gold. Lower California had its gold rushes in 1870 and 1889; its output has exceeded $15,000,000 worth of gold, extracted mainly by placer mining. Silver, copper, iron, and marble are among the other mineral resources scarcely touched.

"Called the Mother of California because of its priority in discovery and settlement, Lower California has twice been temporarily annexed to the United States. During the Mexican war in 1847 the territory was occupied by American troops. Six years later the international free-booter William Walker boldly captured the area, making his headquarters at the capital, La Paz, and set up a swashbuckling republic with a flag concocted of the stars-and-stripe motif. He was acquitted later in a San Francisco trial."